How to Remain Positive During the Lockdown

These are tough times.

In our wildest dreams, we could perhaps have not imagined living in such a situation. The movie”Contagion”, I believe has the scenario very similar to what we are in right now. It’s amazing how script writers could envisage the situation and the research that  must have gone into it. I have new found respect for Hollywood.

Recently, I read a book ‘Pandemic” by Robin Cook. The scenario is similar, though the virus in the book was transmitted by intimate contact and therefore was  not as widespread as the Covid19.

The point of the above two examples is that if you are feeling that you are currently living in a movie or a book or a fantasy world, you are not alone.It feels surreal at times.

Unfortunately, this is not a simulation. This is AS REAL AS IT GETS. AND REAL IS SCARY.

Moving Past the Fear

My husband and I have been working from home for the past one week. My children have been away from school longer than that- maybe close to three weeks. My in-laws stay with me and are senior citizens.

We trying our best to cope with the situation of the 21 day complete national lockdown as announced by the Prime Minister. This has been lauded as an essential and brave step. And we are all in support of this. But the situation does get to us.

I look around and in my family, I see fear and uncertainty. I feel the same too, sometimes. Questions pop into my mind:

• How long will this continue?
• Will we continue to receive essential items?
• How will this impact the  kids?
• Are our house helpers doing OK?
• What if……

Yesterday, as i listened to an interview with a WHO expert, it was clear that Corona Virus is here to stay, as long we don’t develop a vaccine. This only means that once we have contained the current outbreak with the lockdown, we still have to learn to live with the virus in our midst. In fact, the expert used the terms “We have to respect the virus”.

Social distancing and hand hygiene are likely to become the norm. Maybe remote working too. Perhaps, we have to get used to restricted travel. And we will have to take this in our stride.

If you are scared, acknowledge your fear. Then begin to move forward. In the immortal words of Mountain Dew “Dar ke aage Jeet Hai”.

How to Remain Positive During These Times

1) Create and Maintain a Routine

Life before Corona Virus was structured around routines.You got up at a specific time, had to get the kids ready, breakfast, left for work, kids had classes as per the day of the week, you managed the house help, got dinner in place, planned your next vacation and finally turned in, exhausted and satisfied that your day went exactly as planned.

Now there is no plan. There is no urgency to get things done.

Still, don’t let time slide away. Create a routine, perhaps one that is not as strenuous. Having a routine in place gives you motivation. It lets you make a transition smoothly from one task to another. Considering that in most cases, house helpers are not coming. most of us have enough to do in terms of washing, cleaning, cooking and so on.

2) Schedule in Time for Exercise

This is perhaps the most over repeated advice/tip across all information around this topic. And the reason for this is that physical activity is really that important.

Remember how you had a routine to go out for a run or go to the gym and you felt so good. Adapt to do something at home. There are tons of videos online for home workouts. Believe me, the sweat will make you feel amazing. 

Earlier you went to the gym because it was part of your routine. You had painstakingly carved out that block of time for exactly this purpose.

Now the scenario is different. You will feel a lack of motivation. You will feel no sense of urgency to work out (No rushing back home to get ready and leave for work!!). And this is exactly when you need to push yourself and work out. This is where you have to stick to your physical fitness goals. And the fact that you did so will put you in a positive frame of mind like nothing else. Go on try it.

3) Make Time For Family and Friends

There are jokes going around social media that couples and families are just not used used to spending so much time with each other. People may get on each others’nerves. Really????

Jokes apart, this is the time to bond with family. Deepen your relationships. How often have you wanted to spend more time with your spouse and/or your children? 

How often you have wanted to connect with friends, cousins, ex-colleagues, college mates and others? Use this time. revive old memories. It is sure to bring a smile  or two.

We have  literally been given the gift of time. Let’s use it. And we’ll have an amazing story to tell our grand kids.

4) Catch Up on Reading

If you are like me, you probably have  books lying around that you meant to get to, but never did. This is the time to read. 

There are amazing books out there that will entertain and educate. This is the chance to also inculcate the  reading habit in your children. Because children do as we do and not as we say. The more we read, the more they will too.

5) Believe that this Too Shall Pass

Yes, it will. Give out positive vibrations and energy. Do not always keep an eye on the numbers -(how many infected, how many deaths and so on). Of course, that will depress you. Keep yourself informed. but do  not always discuss the morbidity. You will attract more such news.

Reach out and help in any way that you can. Make a contribution. Provide a meal. No contribution is small and no act of kindness is unnecessary.

Believe that the experts are doing their best. Do not get into conversations that criticize efforts being made. Truly believe that everyone is doing their best.

I’d like to leave you with this quote:

 

Conversations: Overheard

“Hi…It’s me”

“What..I can’t believe this…And yet, it’s you..You are standing right here. OMGGG..I thought you had gone forever. I had lost all hope you would ever come back..is it really you…”

“Calm down, calm down. Yes yes, it is me.  I went away without informing you. And each second away from you has been torture. But you know the circumstances. There was not much in my hands. We were pulled apart by a cruel fate”

“Of course, I don’t blame you. We are lucky, we got another chance. I have heard horror stories where true partners who get separated never meet again….you know you are the best fit for me”

“I know and you are the best fit for me.  Without you I would cease to exist”

“And I would cease to exist without you..After all, who keeps just a left sock”

So saying the left and right socks, separated a week ago in the washing cycle met and acknowledged each other in the dark corner of the closet.

All was well in the sock world..once again.

Love in the time of Coronavirus: Lockdown Dairies: Day 3

March 23, 2020, Monday

Day 3 of Lockdown

Today was the first for many things. Today was the day of the working week and today was the first day that I worked from home in Ciron.

How life changes. We plan and plan and plan, and things take a U turn. Never in a 1000 years, would I have imagined Ciron letting us work from home. But then again, Coronavirus is something none of us had ever imagined.

To say that the world has been brought to a grinding halt would not be an exaggeration.

Anyways, back to the purpose of this post, which is to document our lock down journey.

Working from home turned out to be not bad at all. Was able to get much done, with calls and whatsapp messages and so forth.

Worked straight from 10.00 am- 6.00 pm.

No maids and Cooks

Society has also stopped the entrance of house maids and cooks. That’s great. With the shut down of public transport, they have no ways to come. And we do not want to compromise their safety. So we are all in a way, spending time in cleaning our houses and cooking.

As always, food takes up a big portion of our life. We made poori choley yesterday.

Little Helpers

Well, not so little anymore.

Kaamya learned to make dosais. Abhinav of course is always helpful in the kitchen. Yesterday he helped change the bedsheets of both beds.

I did the sweeping. Anand made coffee in the evening. Kaamya also cleaned up her cupboard.

Games and Play

We played UNO in the evening.

Highlight of the day:

The CV song is recorded and complete. I came out beautifully.

It is now time today to post these blogs.

 

 

Love in the time of Coronovirus:Lockdown Dairies: Day 2

March 22, 2020, Sunday

Day 2 of Lockdown

Today was a day of excitement. Today is the day PM Modi has called for #jantacurfew. He has urged all people to remain at home from 7.00 am to 9.00 pm. The purpose of the janta curfew is to break the cycle of spread of the corona virus.

So this virus cannot remain outside the human body for more than 12 hours.

So if people have remained indoors from Saturday night 9.00 pm to Sunday night 9.00 pm, further, continuing till 7.00 am  Monday morning, we will achieve 36 hours of significant social distancing. This should help us flatten the curve.

As of now, as per media reports, janta curfew is a success. I pray that it works well.

In terms of our activity.

1. Got up at 5.30 am, had coffee and went to buys milk, as milkman will not come today. He had shortage of milk, so I only purchased the requisite qty, not extra.
2. Came home, read 10 pages of “artist’s Way’ and that induced such sleep that I went off to sleep.
3. Got up, git started on my exercise routine.
4. I think all of us will lose weight in these 10 days, eating from out is completely cut off.
5. Had to undertake – jaadu, as maid would not come.
6. Stopped after two rooms and conducted work out for family – 15 minutes with 3 minutes meditation and visualization.
7. In the morning, I had a one hour discussion with Anand on various points. I told him he needs to make an action plan and dedicate at least 30 minutes evryday to it.
8. After nap, when we got up, it was time to applaud our heroes- our heroes in the frontline in keeping us safe from Covid19 and the heroes who ensure that our life is as less disrupted as possible- grocery guys, milk guys, paav wala and so on.
9. India erupted into a euphony of sounds of tribute that brought tears to the eyes and emboldened our spirits.
10. I hope what we are doing now is enough. I hope it is not too little, too late.
11. Moving further into the day, we had garam garam sabdhana wada- courtesy the MIL. People at home always means elaborate snacks.
12. Then we worked on our projects.
13. We identified some habits that we need to work on.
14. My heart broke over the situation in Italy.
15. The best for the last – Abhinav and Kaamya created a song over Corona. Pushing their creativity.
16. It will be recorded today and shared.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus:Lockdown Diaries:Day 1

March 21, 2020,

Day 1 of quarantine

1. We are doing well so far. Together we formed an exercise routine. We did surya namskars. We did crunches, squats and more.
2. We had amazing breakfast made by Abhinav, credits: cookingshooking.com- Mac-n-cheese.
3. I worked from home.
4. Abhinav and Kaamya started on their projects. They did their own research and started writing.
5. We slept in the afternoon.
6. I made green chutney.
7. Saw an interesting NetFlix series – Pandemic..
8. Slept in the afternoon.
9. Got up. Did some more work. Saw whatsapp messages from office on protocol for WFH. Made a plan to implement the same.
10. Kids started writing their project.
11. Made plan that we will allocate two days per project.
12. Projects for other subjects also submitted. Created a separate “school projects” whatsapp group to keep track of the project.
13. Had burgers for dinner.
14. Made paalak methi dal for self…very tasty.
15. Sang on karaoke with Kaamya….Should record this.
16. Played NPAT- 2-3 rounds.
17. Went to bed.

The ABC of Success

All of us want to achieve success at work. Success can be defined in so many ways. It could be as simple as achieving a short term goal you had planned for the day or it could be an accomplishing an activity that is the first small step in taking you towards the larger organizational vision.

We can safely define success as achieving results that take us closer to our goals. What are some of the ways of achieving this success.

Surely there are many ways. Here are three principles that I have observed and which I’d like to share with you based on what has worked for me.

The ABC of Success

1) Attitude

Your attitude is what you bring to work every single day along with yourself. When you start with an attitude to learn, to understand and more importantly listen, you become significantly closer to achieving your goals.

At work, things can and will go the way you least expect them to. Problems will crop up, new regulations will be imposed seemingly overnight. Yet the attitude that you bring in to deal with these problems is what separates the winners from the losers.

A pessimistic attitude or a defeatist one will not only make the situation worse than it is, it will also further demotivate the team and curb any solution oriented thinking on their part. In all the years that I have been working, I have realized that there are very few problems that are truly ‘solution less’. More often than not, a solution can be worked out that is to the satisfaction of all involved. Coming to this final step from the point the crisis surfaces starts from a positive attitude.

“Man is a social Animal”, and this is most true in a work scenario. Rarely, we can achieve our goals completely on our own. We cooperate, coordinate and interact with our colleagues across departments and get things done. Here again attitude plays an important role. With the right attitude, people find you pleasant to work with, and colleagues may in fact attend to your requests earlier rather than later. These little things matter a lot. Never underestimate their importance.

As a leader, when you have the right attitude, you inspire and motivate your team. Your team would rather put in the extra effort than let you down.

So, keep the attitude right and you’ll see success close in your grasp.

 

2) Blocking your Time

We all want to multi task, but studies have shown that the human brain is not at its best while multi tasking. It is very difficult for us to focus on more than one task at a time. We may fool ourselves into think that we can do it. But in reality, you will find that you are taking more time to complete the multiple tasks, than you would have, had you tackled them, one at a time.

To be able to focus on one task at a time, implement the approach of creating strategic time blocks. Create 1-2 time blocks of between 1.5 – 2 hours in your day. And during these strategic blocks, choose to focus on any one aspect of your key result area. You could utilize this to work on agreements, to review a specific client’s sales data and business projections or you could work on setting your goals for the next quarter, next financial year.

I have also observed that keeping your phone DND mode during these strategic time blocks does help. The question perhaps then arises as to why can cannot have the entire day divided into multiple strategic time blocks. That should help us get more done. While in theory, this is correct, practically, it is not so simple. It would be difficulty to focus unwaveringly for the entire duration of the day. One does need breaks. Further, besides strategic tasks, there are also several regular administrative tasks that have to be completed in our day to day work life.

Hence I ask of you not go overboard. Start with scheduling one -two strategic time blocks everyday or thrice a week.  You will observe a drastic shift in your productivity and end result, bringing you closed to success.

3) Customer First Approach

Every business exists because of the customer. If there is no customer, clearly, there is no business. Thus, it seems like I am stating the obvious when I mention that having a customer first approach is one of the golden rules to success.

Understand that the customer is human and does not expect miracles. But he does expect regular updates, and a heads up if there is an issue.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, in the course if business, there are rarely some problems that have no solution at all, A significant number of issues  can be amicably resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the both the service provider (or product seller), that’s you and the customer.

Think of yourself as the customer’s representative. Make sure that you are constantly pushing your internal teams to meet the requirements of the customers.

Always keep the channels of communication open with the customer.

Once your customer is happy, your business grows and success comes your way.

In Conclusion

If you want to achieve success, don’t chase success. Success is intangible. The tangible things that you can work on are your attitude, creating strategic blocks of time to focus on important tasks and key result areas and eventually keeping the communication with  the customers going.

When these tangibles become part of your routine and you keep repeating them every single day, success is inevitable. Success will creep in on you and take you by surprise.

 

Conversations

 

 

“She’s so bossy”, they whispered behind her back.

“It’s my responsibility to get things done”, she told herself.

“Oh my God, she stays back late all the time, she doesn’t have a life”, they laughed about her.

“I’ll learn to prioritize and achieve greater efficiency”, she made a decision. “A few  late nights to make sure I deliver my commitments to clients will contribute to my success”, she introspected.

“She wants everything perfect, how is that possible”, they wailed.

“When we delve deep within ourselves, and promise to do our best every single day, why is perfection not possible”, she questioned.

Today, she is a successful professional with her own business, and they..they are stuck where they were….

 

.

 

 

We are Doing our Best!!

It’s OK that the house is not in perfect order,
Just like it’s OK that you have help to keep the house in perfect order.

It’s OK that you feel you don’t look your best every single day,
Just like its OK that you are well groomed at all times.

It’s OK that you are proud of your child who didn’t make the passing grade,
Just like you are proud of your child who topped the class.

You are a woman, you are a mother,
You are doing your best, no comparison with another.

Let;s not be shackled by what society tells us is wrong or right,
Let’s learn to develop empathy in our vision and sight.

We are all sisters doing our best every single day
And let’s support each other all the way

Happiness at Work

There are several definitions of happiness. Here are few of them.

Happiness is a state of mind.

Happiness is a choice and one can choose to be happy despite any circumstance.

Happiness comes from within and you are the only person in charge of your happiness. Do not hand over the reins of your happiness to an external person or event. That’s a sure fire way to set off on the path of unhappiness.

Given that these are the traditional (and perhaps true) definitions of happiness…my question is simple:

Can one apply these principles of happiness at work?

When one is part of a team, can one be happy on his or her own. At work, we thrive on appreciation, which motivates us. When such appreciation is not forthcoming, can we still be happy?

At work, we make decisions every single day. Some great, some good, some not amazing at all. Can we still remain happy and make peace with our bad decisions?

And as for productivity- are we happy because we are productive or do we become more productive because we are happy? I don’t know.

Does anyone out there have an answer?